snmp.conf

snmp.conf - configuration files for the Net-SNMP applications

Applications built using the Net-SNMP libraries typically use one or more configuration files to control various aspects of their operation. These files (snmp.conf and snmp.local.conf) can be located in one of several locations, as described in the snmp_config(5) manual page.

In particular, /etc/snmp/snmp.conf is a common file, containing the settings shared by all users of the system. ~/.snmp/snmp.conf is a personal file, with the settings specific to a particular user.

Several of these directives may contain sensitive information (such as pass phrases). Configuration files that include such settings should only be readable by the user concerned.

As well as application-specific configuration tokens, there are several directives that relate to standard library behaviour, relevant to most Net-SNMP applications. Many of these correspond to standard command-line options, which are described in the snmpcmd(1) manual page.

These directives can be divided into several distinct groups.

"defaultPort defines the default UDP port that client SNMP applications will attempt to connect to. This can be overridden by explicitly including a port number in the AGENT specification. See the snmpcmd(1) manual page for more details.

If not specified, the default value for this token is 161.

"defVersion defines the default version of SNMP to use. This can be overridden using the -v option.

"defCommunity defines the default community to use for SNMPv1 and SNMPv2c requests. This can be overridden using the -c option.

"dumpPacket defines whether to display a hexadecimal dump of the raw SNMP requests sent and received by the application. This is equivalent to the -d option.

"doDebugging turns on debugging for all applications run if set to 1.

"debugTokens defines the debugging tokens that should be turned on when doDebugging is set. This is equivalent to the -D option.

"16bitIDs restricts requestIDs, etc to 16-bit values.

The SNMP specifications define these ID fields as 32-bit quantities, and the Net-SNMP library typically initialises them to random values for security. However certain (broken) agents cannot handle ID values greater than 2^16 - this option allows interoperability with such agents.

"clientaddr specifies the source address to be used by command-line applications when sending SNMP requests. See snmpcmd(1) for more information about the format of addresses.

This value is also used by snmpd when generating notifications.

"clientRecvBuf specifies the desired size of the buffer to be used when receiving responses to SNMP requests. If the OS hard limit is lower than the clientRecvBuf value, then this will be used instead. Some platforms may decide to increase the size of the buffer actually used for internal housekeeping.

This directive will be ignored if the platforms does not support setsockopt().

"clientSendBuf is similar to clientRecvBuf, but applies to the size of the buffer used when sending SNMP requests.

"noRangeCheck disables the validation of varbind values against the MIB definition for the relevant OID. This is equivalent to the -Ir option.

This directive is primarily relevant to the snmpset command, but will also apply to any application that calls snmp_add_var() with a non-NULL value.

"noTokenWarnings" disables warnings about unknown config file tokens.

"reverseEncodeBER controls how the encoding of SNMP requests is handled.

The default behaviour is to encode packets starting from the end of the PDU and working backwards. This directive can be used to disable this behaviour, and build the encoded request in the (more obvious) forward direction.

It should not normally be necessary to change this setting, as the encoding is basically the same in either case - but working backwards typically produces a slightly more efficient encoding, and hence a smaller network datagram.

"defSecurityName defines the default security name to use for SNMPv3 requests. This can be overridden using the -u option.

"defSecurityLevel defines the default security level to use for SNMPv3 requests. This can be overridden using the -l option.

If not specified, the default value for this token is noAuthNoPriv.

"Note: authPriv is only available if the software has been compiled to use the OpenSSL libraries.

"defPassphrase

"defAuthPassphrase

"defPrivPassphrase define the default authentication and privacy pass phrases to use for SNMPv3 requests. These can be overridden using the -A and -X options respectively.

The defPassphrase value will be used for the authentication and/or privacy pass phrases if either of the other directives are not specified.

"defAuthType

"defPrivType define the default authentication and privacy protocols to use for SNMPv3 requests. These can be overridden using the -a and -x options respectively.

If not specified, SNMPv3 requests will default to MD5 authentication and DES encryption.

"Note: If the software has not been compiled to use the OpenSSL libraries, then only MD5 authentication is supported. Neither SHA authentication nor any form of encryption will be available.

"defContext defines the default context to use for SNMPv3 requests. This can be overridden using the -n option.

If not specified, the default value for this token is the default context (i.e. the empty string "").

"defSecurityModel defines the security model to use for SNMPv3 requests. The default value is "usm" which is the only widely used security model for SNMPv3.

"defAuthMasterKey

"defPrivMasterKey

"defAuthLocalizedKey

"defPrivLocalizedKey define the (hexadecimal) keys to be used for SNMPv3 secure communications. SNMPv3 keys are frequently derived from a passphrase, as discussed in the defPassphrase section above. However for improved security a truely random key can be generated and used instead (which would normally has better entropy than a password unless it is amazingly long). The directives are equivalent to the short-form command line options -3m, -3M, -3k, and -3K.

Localized keys are master keys which have been converted to a unique key which is only suitable for on particular SNMP engine (agent). The length of the key needs to be appropriate for the authentication or encryption type being used (auth keys: MD5=16 bytes, SHA1=20 bytes; priv keys: DES=16 bytes (8 bytes of which is used as an IV and not a key), and AES=16 bytes).

"persistentDir defines the directory where snmpd and snmptrapd store persistent configuration settings.

If not specified, the persistent directory defaults to /var/lib/snmp

"noPersistentLoad

"noPersistentSave disable the loading and saving of persistent configuration information.

"Note:" This will break SNMPv3 operations (and other behaviour that relies on changes persisting across application restart). Use With Care.

"tempFilePattern defines a filename template for creating temporary files, for handling input to and output from external shell commands. Used by the mkstemp() and mktemp() functions.

If not specified, the default pattern is /tmp/snmpdXXXXXX.

"serverRecvBuf specifies the desired size of the buffer to be used when receiving incoming SNMP requests. If the OS hard limit is lower than the serverRecvBuf value, then this will be used instead. Some platforms may decide to increase the size of the buffer actually used for internal housekeeping.

This directive will be ignored if the platforms does not support setsockopt().

"serverSendBuf is similar to serverRecvBuf, but applies to the size of the buffer used when sending SNMP responses.

"mibdirs specifies a list of directories to search for MIB files. This operates in the same way as the -M option - see snmpcmd(1) for details. Note that this value can be overridden by the MIBDIRS environment variable, and the -M option.

"mibs specifies a list of MIB modules (not files) that should be loaded. This operates in the same way as the -m option - see snmpcmd(1) for details. Note that this list can be overridden by the MIBS environment variable, and the -m option.

"mibfile specifies a (single) MIB file to load, in addition to the list read from the mibs token (or equivalent configuration). Note that this value can be overridden by the MIBFILES environment variable.

"showMibErrors whether to display MIB parsing errors.

"strictCommentTerm whether MIB parsing should be strict about comment termination. Many MIB writers assume that ASN.1 comments extend to the end of the text line, rather than being terminated by the next "--" token. This token can be used to accept such (strictly incorrect) MIBs.

"mibAllowUnderline whether to allow underline characters in MIB object names and enumeration values. This token can be used to accept such (strictly incorrect) MIBs.

"mibWarningLevel the minimum warning level of the warnings printed by the MIB parser.

"logTimestamp Whether the commands should log timestamps with their error/message logging or not. Note that output will not look as pretty with timestamps if the source code that is doing the logging does incremental logging of messages that are not line buffered before being passed to the logging routines. This option is only used when file logging is active.

"printNumericEnums Equivalent to R -Oe .

"printNumericOids Equivalent to R -On .

"dontBreakdownOids Equivalent to R -Ob .

"escapeQuotes Equivalent to R -OE .

"quickPrinting Equivalent to R -Oq .

"printValueOnly Equivalent to R -Ov .

"dontPrintUnits Equivalent to R -OU .

"numericTimeticks Equivalent to R -Ot .

"printHexText Equivalent to R -OT .

"hexOutputLength Specifies where to break up the output of hexadecimal strings. Set to 0 to disable line breaks. Defaults to 16.

"suffixPrinting The value 1 is equivalent to -Os and the value 2 is equivalent to R -OS .

"oidOutputFormat Maps -O options as follow: -Os=1, -OS=2, -Of=3, -On=4, -Ou=5. The value 6 has no matching -O option. It suppresses output.

"extendedIndex Equivalent to R -OX .

"noDisplayHint Disables the use of DISPLAY-HINT information when parsing indices and values to set. Equivalent to R -Ih .

/etc/snmp/snmp.conf, /etc/snmp/snmp.local.conf - common configuration settings
~/.snmp/snmp.conf - user-specific configuration settings

snmp_config(5), read_config(3), snmpcmd(1).